Slashdot Mirror
ICANN Plans to Charge Fees to .net Domain Owners
museumpeace writes "ICANN, though it was soundly rebuffed for trying this in the past, is
reported by CNET to be planning a $.75/ year fee to holders of .net domains and will look at fees for other TLD's next year. Is this taxation without representation? And where would this trend stop?"
RTFA... it's $0.75 plus $0.25 they snuck in just recently... Notice how they're sneaking those in? You'll be paying a dollar and you thought it was only $0.75... Slippery slope, isn't it?
They're introducing this because VeriSign's contract to administer .net runs out next year; they can take advantage of the bidding process for that contract to insert the fee. And they may do the same when the .com contract runs out in 2007.
RTFA.
.net is coming to an end in June 2005, and ICANN added the $0.75 fee as a requirement for the companies bidding to operate the TLD. When the others come up, look for the same trick.
It clearly states that Verisign's contract to run
--
Build an internet incorruptible by corps and goverments.
Metanet
please forgive my ignorance, but what does icann do?
You're forgiven. :)
Okay, here's how it works. You know how the tech community likes to tell newbies that nobody controls the Internet? Well, that's not entirely true. At the time the Internet was founded, peer-to-peer was nowhere near as sophisticated as it is today, so you needed somebody to keep all the important information about computers on the Internet, to prevent it from melting into anarchy.
Various organizations (and in particular, Jon Postel) had different sets of these responsibilities until 1998, when ICANN was founded. ICANN is a non-profit corporation with a U.S. government contract. They are responsible for assigning IP addresses (so there's no duplication), running the DNS system (so mere mortals can get to Slashdot without having to memorize IP addresses) and other more mundane tasks specified in various RFCs, such as tracking well-known port numbers and MIME types.
So, ICANN and its subsidiaries basically represent a government-sanctioned monopoly, like the phone company used to be. Other companies and non-profit organizations occasionally try to create alternative DNS services, such as OpenNIC, but they don't usually get very far because ICANN, in its official capacity, squishes them like bugs.
I may be hazy on the details, but I think this is accurate enough to get you started on your own research.
In all realization, it doesn't matter.
Smaller hosting companies will be forced into putting up the full price. The compitition is really high right now. The only people who might be able to get away with it is people like Yahoo, or other heavy weights. Those places would see a larger falling out to smaller ISPs who even though they go through a two middle men, actually are honest about their prices.
On another side, (more to the topic) this isn't the same as a direct tax. We don't have to fill out a form that says we owe 2.5%. I like this flat tax rate. I'm also glad most of the people further back, the ones that go though onlinenic or the like will get fees, the fee will increase price, sure, but to them it'll be a stack on the per domain fee.
I have yet to see why this matters to consumers enough to incite a riot. What we should be rioting about is the insecure MS products allowing our fine internet traffic to be 1-2% (unfounded guess there) viruses. An ISP should be responsible to check if you're vulnerable, and should cut your access if you've got more than 5 open vulnerabilities. MS would quickly fall into disfavor as people realized they had trouble staying on the net with it. SOHO Router manufacturers would love it, it would boost their business, you would have to have a router if you had windows. Unless you had someone who installed a software firewall before you connected the computer to any net connection.
do you think that people would shop at a store that when you bought that $99.00 memory stick they tack on $3.95 Stocking fee, $7.95 shipping fee, and another $5.95 Destination and Delivery fee?
Holy crap, you have no idea how business works, do you? This is *exactly* what they do! They just do tell you. Hell, if they *didn't* pass those costs onto the consumer, they would lose money on every item sold! See, first, you have to realize that they didn't buy that memory stick for $99.00. They bought it for $70.00 directly from the manufacturer or a local distributor. But, it cost them money to ship the thing, pay people's salary to stock it, etc, etc. And so they tack on a certain amount of overhead (basically, to cover their cost of doing business). They then throw some margin in there (they gotta make a profit, otherwise what's the point?), and thus *you* end up paying $99.00.
Jebus, how did you think this stuff worked?!